13 An important aspect of quantum entanglement, and therefore teleportation, is that statistical correlations between otherwise distinct physical locations must exist. These correlations hold even when measurements are chosen and performed independently, out of phase from one another. Meaning that an observation resulting from a measurement choice made at one point in space-time instantaneously affects outcomes in another region, even though light hasn’t yet had time to travel the distance. In other words, when you teleport, you arrive before you left. The Punch Escrow protocol examines the state of each quark as it arrives and validates it against a checksum of its past state. In some ways it’s like looking up at the Sun: light travels rapidly—as far as we know, it’s the fastest thing in the universe—but it’s not infinitely fast. At three hundred thousand kilometers per second, it takes light more than eight minutes to get from the Sun to Earth; so when you see the Sun in the sky, you’re actually seeing the Sun eight minutes ago.
14 Ecophagy literally means “eating the environment.” An ecophagy cage stops nanos from devouring everything around them, including us humans, the earth, and eventually themselves. Self-replicating nanos need a source of energy to drive their replication. The nanos are equipped with an electric and mechanical flagellum that generates tiny currents by swinging through the ambient magnetic fields generated by Earth. Perhaps the earliest-recognized and best-known danger of molecular nanotechnology is the risk that such self-replicating nanos capable of functioning autonomously in the natural environment could quickly convert that natural environment into replicas of themselves on a global basis, a scenario usually referred to as the gray-goo problem, but more properly termed “global ecophagy.” Since gray-goo replication is self-limiting based on the availability of an energy source, then the more organic material that self-replicating nanos consume, the less remains available for further consumption. An ecophagy cage is a mechanism that regulates the availability of energy sources for self-replicating nanos within a three-dimensional grid, defined by longitude, latitude, and altitude. Should a self-replicating nano find itself outside its ecophagy cage boundaries, it and its replicants would simply expire. In the case of oxidation-powered nanos, expiration would happen naturally after exhausting all available organic material, and without the ecophagy cage creating more, the nanos would “starve.” The electromagnetic nanos, however, rely on the ecophagy cage to amplify the ambient magnetic field currents into usable kinetic energy, meaning that once the ecophagy cage stops doing so, the nanos simply run out of juice. You still awake after reading that? Gold star!
15 The international green exit sign was settled on with no shortage of controversy among the escape industry. All the way back in the 1970s, the Japanese fire safety department held a national competition, encouraging people to submit their drawings and visions of what an exit sign should be. The purpose of the competition was to find an exit sign that could be implemented throughout Japan. After testing exit signs that were submitted as part of the competition, the winner was chosen—a gentleman by the name of Yukio Ota. His design was of a green exit sign that showed a man running toward a door. Then around the same time “Karma Chameleon” hit the charts, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) ultimately chose Ota’s sign for international usage. The green running man pretty much remained unchanged for centuries, until eventually its unique color signature became so familiar, that the need for the iconic man was deemed unnecessary. A green sign with a white arrow became the ISO standard for directional paths to emergency exits in the 2100s, and green doors were exits.
ANOTHER OTHER
BACK WHEN I was a freshman at NYU, I thought I’d make my dad proud and take up boxing. Salting was a bit out of his grasp—whenever someone asked him what his son was studying, he’d say, “He asks computers trick questions,” which was true, but he never really got it. Boxing was something concrete, something that he could understand and we could bond over. My coach was a rather optimistic Italian guy who never really acknowledged defeat, and my sparring partners took it easy on me because they thought I was funny. Eventually my dad, coach, and gym friends all managed to convince me to sign up for a fight.
On my first and only time in the ring, they pitted me against a hairy Slavic fellow twice as big as me. Before the first-round bell rang, I knew I was beat. Boy, was I beat. The Slav knocked me down twice in as many minutes, but rather than throw in the towel, my coach told me something that stuck with me for the rest of my life—which at the time I thought was going to end before the round did.
“Kid, ya don’t gotta beat’em—ya just gotta outlast’em.”
He meant the fight, but right then I decided he meant “in life.”
So I got back to my feet, faced my adversary, and then kicked him in the nuts as hard as I could.
I know, it was a dirty trick. Before you judge, consider the outcome: the fight was immediately over, and I would never step in a boxing ring again.
Unfortunately, such wisdom didn’t prepare me for something as simple as a locked door. And since there were no gonads I could see, I tried the knob again.
“Please state the nature of your emergency,” the door said. God damn it, did everything in this building have a brain?
“There’s—uh—a fire,” I said.
“Impossible. No fire or smoke sensors have been triggered.”
“They’re broken.”
“I see no error alerts.”
“Look, you stupid door, there’s a fucking fire in Room D. If you don’t believe me, ask it yourself.”
“I cannot seem to reach that room. Nor can I read your comms.” It paused. “Very well. I shall alert the authorities. Please walk calmly down the stairs in a single file.”
“I’ll do that.”
As the door slid open, green lights started pulsing along the ceiling, and an alarm siren bounced off the walls.
Sure, it was a pretty weak con. If I hadn’t been panicked, concussed, sleep deprived, starved, dehydrated, and on the verge of pissing myself, I’m sure I could have come up with a smoother salt. Things being what they were, I was thrilled that anything I did worked.
Up. I hesitated, my natural escape instinct nudging me toward the ground and the freedom of open streets. Remember what Pema said. Her plan has worked so far; now get upstairs and find “them.” Wherever she’s sending me, whatever you may find there, you’ll be better off than you were in the conference room. Move!
I ran up. The stairs themselves were painted the same emergency green, a stark contrast to the unpainted gray cement walls of the stairwell. The perfect echo chamber for the blaring wail of the alarm. Its song served as a wonderful incentive for me to hurry the fuck up.
One down, three to go.
I reached Floor Ten without further incident, which I took as a sign of the turning of the tides. I tried to listen for footsteps coming from downstairs. If there were any, they would have been drowned out by the alarm. I decided that I was being chased. It was a safe bet.
Two.